I've seen many prototypes of mobile UIs that can't be built and if they could, would not be legible on a small LCD screen. So I thought I'd provide some pointers that might help those of you that is starting out. Often, people starting out prototyping mobile phone UIs get the size of the display right but the size of the font wrong. They try to stuff way too much in there, and they use a font size and font family that is not available in the phone.

If you design applications, you can make pixel perfect designs. If you design mobile web pages, you go for a rough estimate. Having the correct font is important if you design applications, less important if you make mobile websites.

Most current phones use anti-aliased fonts and many of these are available in TrueType versions that you can use on your PC. I've provided links to "official" sources, you may find more if you search the web, but quality may vary.

Font families

Below is an overview the OS fonts used by Tier 1 manufacturers.

Nokia Series 40 and S60

Nokia BW fonts

S60 Sans (Monotype Inc.)

You can get a TrueType version of the S60 Sans font by downloading and installing one of the Nokia S60 SDks. The fonts currently used in Series 40 devices are the same (or close enough). Note that Series 40 and S60 does not use the same font size for the same screen size however.

Prior to 3rd edition, Nokia used BW fonts, one font for S60 and one font for Series 40. I handmade TrueType versions of these fonts 3 or 4 years ago. If you need them for the purpose of mobile UI prototyping, send me an email.

Sony Ericsson OSE and UIQ

Sans-Serif (Monotype Inc.)

You can get a TrueType version of this font by downloading and installing the UIQ 3.0 SDK from the UIQ website.

Motorola (various proprietary OSes)

SynergyBasic (Bitstream Inc.)

I have a Bold only version that I once found somewhere on the intertubes, but I can't locate it anymore. The font is similar to Univers and you might get by with that.

Samsung and LG (proprietary OSes)

I don't have information on what fonts their feature phones uses. If you know, leave a comment or send me an email and I'll update it here.

HTC, Motorola, Samsung, etc running Windows Mobile 6

TrueType versions of Segoe and Nina are installed with Vista and Office 2007. If you don't have the Condensed version of Segoe, you can get it by downloading the Windows Mobile 6 Standard SDK.

(Windows Mobile 6 Professional or Classic includes Tahoma and Courier.)

Others

Google Android

Droid (Ascender Corp.)

The Droid font family has a sans, a serif and a monospace version. Strangely, the sans version does not have italics.

Sans (Regular, Bold)Serif (Regular, Bold, Italic, Bold Italic)Mono (Regular)Sans Asian (This is also the fallback font. Meaning it includes a glyph for all Unicode characters.)

[edit: link is corrected] You can extract the fonts from the system.tar.gz file here.

LiMo and other Linux variants

Vera (Bitstream Inc.) and DejaVu

Bitstream gave the Vera font to the open source community. Vera has been modified and evolved into DejaVu. You can find these fonts a number of places, just google them.

RIM Blackberry

Did you know that Blackberry typography is the universally accepted definition of the word "awful"? I would prefer to just put my head in the sand and pretend it didn't exist - or at least looked better. But let's put the pixel policing aside, here are the fonts you have access to from Java:

Millbank

Millbank Tall

System

All are available in Regular, Bold, Italic and Bold Italic, AFAIK. I have not found TrueType versions of these fonts anywhere.

iPhone

According to John Gruber, these fonts are included in the iPhone OS X:

American Typewriter

American Typewriter Condensed

Arial

Arial Rounded MT Bold

Courier New

Georgia

Helvetica

Marker Felt

Times New Roman

Trebuchet MS

Verdana

Zapfino

Since there is no official iPhone SDK available yet, you can only use these fonts in the browser. The way to get these fonts is of course to own a Mac. (Btw, I have a really, really nasty case of MacBook Air lust and I'm trying to convince my wife that we need yet another computer in the house.)

Font sizes

In Java ME you have 3 set font sizes Small, Medium and Large. With the new anti-aliased fonts, you have to measure what font size matches what phone screen size for the different manufacturers.

Get some screen dumps from the phone, open them in Photoshop and Visio (or whatever software you prefer) and measure what point size equals the font size on the phone. For example: a 240x320 screen Series 40 phone uses font heights of 16, 20 and 24 pixels. This equals a point size of 16, 21 and 25 in Photoshop.

In a phone web browser you can specify the font size, but how its rendered is dependent on the capabilities of both the phone and the browser. It ranges from a single font size for all text to continuously variable size. I don't think it makes sense to spend a lot of time in Photoshop designing mobile web pages.

The entire mobile font size/screen size issue is somewhat complex and I'll try to cover it in a future blog post.

Nokias "Comes With
Music" (CWM) announcement initially got a very positive reaction when
it was announced at Nokia World. After details about the service became
known, the service was poo-poo'ed by many,
mainly because of DRM. I believe the negative reaction is more than a little elitist, and that
music subscription services like CWM will succeed when offered to the general public. Here are some
reasons why.

First, what is CWM? It is a subscription
service tied to the purchase of a mobile phone. When you buy the device
you get a voucher for 1 year "all you can eat" music download to your
PC and your mobile phone. When 1 year is over, you can no longer
download new music, but you can still play the music you already have
on your phone or PC. There is no "renewal" apart from buying another "Comes
With Music" mobile phone. Currently Universal Music is a partner,
and more labels are expected to join before the service launches around
mid 2008.

Do people expect music to be free?

CWM is criticised because the music can only be played
on your PC and on your mobile phone. For example by ars technica who thinks that this service would only be interesting if, for the
price of $60, you were free to download all the music in the world,
keep it forever and play it back on any device you want. Sure, you got to keep your dream alive, etc. But does this
sound naïve to anyone else besides me?

Most people do actually place a value on music - they don't expect
"too-good-to-be-true" deals.

CWM comes with DRM. Putting DRM on music
files that have been bought and paid for creates a lot of problems. When
people pay money to buy a specific music track and download
that file, they feel that a transfer of ownership has taken place. That
they now own this file and can play it whenever they want.
But if people subscribe to a service they have different expectations.
Its like a magazine subscription. When you stop the subscription you
are not receiving any more magazines. But you can still read the old
ones. I think the DRM criticism is irrelevant in a subscription
context, and it will have no impact on sales if it is marketed as a subscription service.

Digital music services are more scarce than you may think.

It seems like there is a multitude of digital music offerings: Napster,Rhapsody, Yahoo Music, Zune Marketplace, Amazon MP3, Wal-Mart,
eMusic, etc, etc. But try to buy from any of these. All of them are basically US only. None of them are available world wide. The main offers in the rest of the world are iTunes (buy DRM'ed music 99c a song) and mobile
operator portals( buy DRM'ed music $2 a song).

How big is the rest of the world? Let's be generous and say that the US is 10%. This means that
90% of "the market for digital downloaded music" is under-served.

People and their record collections

There
is an often heard argument that people don't want this type of service because they
"loose" their record collection when the service expires. This is
of course an anachronism of sorts, but it may well be one of the main
causes slowing the growth of music subscription services. Looking
ahead, people may not build up a record collection, but instead build
up a playlist and take that playlist to the music service of their
choice. I am certainly aware of the "desire for ownership", but I also
believe this to some extent is a cultural issue.

Subscription services make more money for the record labels

Each
iTunes customer spends $1-$2 each month buying music. Each Napster or
Rhapsody subscriber spends $10 per month.
(source) My
guess is as good or bad as any, but CWM probably costs Nokia between $60 and $80 per customer per year. I
don't think a markup like that for "unlimited music" will be any
problem in most mature markets. If the phone is subsidized, the customer will most likely not notice the cost at all.It is likely that a lot of other record labels want to come on board. A
large catalog makes the service more interesting for customers. Currently music subscription services revenue is only 20-25% of music download revenue, but this may change fast.

I believe it is likely that other device manufacturers will offer hardware, both mobile phones and PMPs, bundled with music subscription during 2008. It will be interesting to watch this space.

This may be heresy, but I believe that if Dickens were a live today, he would not have written about the French Revolution, he would have written about the mobile operators. The end of the thousand-year rule of kings in the mobile sector and the passing of power down to us, the common touch tone dialers.

But it does not seem like Steve Jobs gets to play the part of Napoleon Bonaparte. Steve Jobs claims that iPhone will “reinvent” the telecommunications sector. Eh? It is a closed device running on a closed network sold through exclusive (closed) distributorship. Doesn't sound like progress to me.

The iPhone is on its way to Europe. Why would European consumers want this type of "reinvention"? Granted, Europe is big with a lot of operators and different business practices, but here is my situation today:

There is no network limitation on what kind of services I may choose.

My phone is fully functioning, no functionality is removed by the operator.

My phone is an open device, I can install anything I want. No limitations.

I have full number portability and I can change to any operator at any time. (Ok, it takes 4 days.)

Do customers want to pay a premium for the iPhone if it means being locked into Apples Walled Garden however beautiful it is?

I am biased, but the fact is that the trend is towards openness, not away from it. Open or industry-standard platforms where third-party applications can run as first class passengers and access the networks without hindrance.

Apples actions are undeniably to increase
lock-in and protect the proprietary (i.e. closed) aspects of their
business model. (Joel West)

New device, old-school business practice. It looks like Apple is on it's way to become the new evil empire. Or maybe it always were, we just didn't notice. Those of us who "Think different" have to look elsewhere.

This may be heresy, but I believe that if Dickens were alive today,
he would not have written about the French Revolution, he would have
written about the mobile operators. The end of the thousand-year rule
of kings in the mobile sector and the passing of power down to us, the
common touch tone dialers.

But it does not seem like Steve Jobs gets to play the part of Napoleon Bonaparte any time soon. Steve
Jobs claims that iPhone will “reinvent” the telecommunications sector.
Eh? It is a closed device running on a closed network sold through
exclusive (closed) distributorship. Doesn't sound like progress to me.

The iPhone is on its way to Europe. Why would European consumers want this type of "reinvention"? This is a fairly typical situation today:

There is no network limitation on what kind of services I may choose.

My phone is an open device, I can install anything I want. No limitations.

I have full number portability and I can change to any operator anytime. (OK, it takes 4 days.)

Do customers want to pay a premium for the iPhone if it means being locked into Apples Walled Garden, however beautiful it is?

Apples actions are undeniably to increase
lock-in and protect the proprietary (i.e. closed) aspects of their
business model. (Joel West)

From a consumer perspective, the ideal situation is when the
operator delivers "dumb networks" and the phone manufacturers delivers
"open platforms".

The iPhone is the anti-thesis of this thinking. The device is exclusive
to particular operators, it is a closed device. It has more
restrictions on what kind of content you can access that any other
device in its class. The device caters primarily to Apple content. A
lot of the content that is traditionally sold "on deck" or "off deck"
like ringtones and games can not run on the iPhone. On the other hand
content from Apple like music and video is very well integrated
through iTunes.

I may be biased, but the fact is that the trend is towards
openness, not away from it. On the Enterprise side, the trend is open or industry-standard platforms where
third-party applications can run as first class passengers and access networks without hindrance. Does Ovi and iTunes mean that the trend is towards closed environments on the Consumer side?

August 31, 2007

I want to invite you to my new gig over at Light Thinking. We are devloping light gadgets for photographers.

You can't be a designer and not be into photography at some level. Maybe you know about the whole off-camera strobe movement that originated over at at strobist? Maybe you even know about the new HDSLR cameras and all the amazing stuff people are doing with them?

The iPhone is called a Smartphone by the US press. This is a misnomer, but it doesn't really matter. When the iPhone is introduced in Europe in a few months, its is initially going to compete with Feature Phones from Sony Ericsson and Nseries "multimedia computers" from Nokia. My prediction: The iPhone will give Sony Ericsson a severe beating, but will eventually lose out to Nokia.

This is what the manufacturers are thinking about their high-end phones:

The device philosophy of Sony Ericsson is: Phones with one additional feature. Sony Ericsson have their "Walkman" series of music phones and their "Cybershot" series of camera phones.

The device philosophy of Nokia is: The mobile phone is the new computer. The Nseries phones are "open platform devices" where you can connect to any network and install whatever software, service or life hack you need to support your digital lifestyle.

The device philosophy of Apple is: Phone, iPod and Internet device on a closed platform.

The iPhone is currently a closed device with very basic functionality, but it has turned the "mobile phone world" on its head. Its a beautiful but expensive device. It does not do a lot, but what it does, it does better that anyone else. Sony Ericsson makes a lot of money from their Walkman branded phones, phones that are marketed as music players. The only problem is that they are truly miserable music players compared to the iPhone. The iPod and the iTunes ecosystem has set the standard for portable music players and Sony Ericsson does not even come close.

The trouble with the Sony Ericsson Walkman phones is not the phones themselves. The trouble is that Sony Ericsson depends on the operators to deliver the music to the phones and the operators are messing up. The experience of putting a song onto a handset , whether it is by downloading over the air or by side loading from a PC, is just poor. This has led to speculations recently; people buy phones for their music playing capabilities, but are they actually playing music on them?

Apple does not suffer the same operator dependence when it comes to user experience for the music player. Any customer who want a phone + music player device is likely to select the iPhone over a Walkman phone. This may force Sony Ericsson to lower prices.

Nokia on the other hand is taking steps to avoid the operator trap that Sony Ericsson currently sits in. How? Well, by copying Apple. According to Anssi Vanjoki (the guy with the $103,600 speeding ticket) Nokia will "copy with pride". And why not? As Russel Beattie points out in his (too busy but otherwise excellent) blog:

...it will take Apple several
*years* to come up with a competing product that has anywhere near
these level of features. Apple just doesn't have the mobile
hardware chops to do it themselves. [...] They don't
have the experience, know how or partnerships to get it done and
still be profitable.

As I have pointed out before, the iPhone ease-of-use is nothing magic. Apple has done a fantastic job, and the most fantastic part is that here is a company that has the balls to actually do it.

But Apple has created a closed walled garden product and who wants to live in a walled garden? Tying the device to a particular operator, not letting anyone install as much as a small Java game or a ringtone on the device without Apples consent?? Please! Do you think we live in Albania or the US or something?

August 07, 2007

I want to invite you to my new gig over at Light Thinking. We are devloping light gadgets for photographers.

You can't be a designer and not be into photography at some level. Maybe you know about the whole off-camera strobe movement that originated over at at strobist? Maybe you even know about the new HDSLR cameras and all the amazing stuff people are doing with them?

Apple has filed a patent application for a "multi-touch gesture dictionary". This has
spurred some debate in the IxD community. Can you patent a language? Is it
good? Is it evil? Etc. etc.

1) Gestures used for controlling
machines via touch screens do not constitute a language,
linguistically. Gestures are simply a collection of commands. No
language has ever been patented, not braille, not sign language, not
esperanto etc.
There is 20+ years of prior art in this field (research on touch
screens and gestures) and anyone trying to patent a set of gestures
will have a really hard time finding gestures that are not already
"prior art". All the good ones are already "taken".

2) Many of us have tried our hand at designing icons and know
how hard that can be; very few commands can easily be visualized
iconically. The best touch screen gestures are symbolic/iconic. A
symbol/icon is based on imitation; the "flick" scroll gesture is one
example. You might argue that Option-C or Ctrl-C are symbols as well,
they "imitate" the word "Copy". Trouble is that you soon run out of
"symbolic"/iconic gestures and you have to use signs instead. Signs
have an arbritrary relationship to their 'meaning' - the command they
signal, and they have to be learned and memorized. What is the
relationship between Option-V or Ctrl-V and "Paste"? (The only
"relation" is spatial on a qwerty-keyboard: the V key is next to the C
on the keyboard, and "Paste" often follows "Copy".)

And this might just be the point of the Apple patent! Apple
seeks to patent every imaginable way to assist learning sign gestures.
Since there are so few symbolic gestures, Apple knows you are going to
have to start learning the sign ones. And they want to ensure that you
can't get help without some money tickling into the Apple bank account.